The winning entrants in the contest held at the Beachwood museum this spring carry an important lesson: If children and adults -- particularly adults -- really put their minds to it, they could make bullying a lot less prevalent.

Let's begin with these inspiring kids: Grand prize-winner Gabrielle Jones, a 12th-grader at Martin Luther King Jr. High School in Cleveland, described how she endured physical and emotional bullying because she was overweight.

First runner-up Hannah Schmidt, a 12th-grader at Brush High School in Lyndhurst, wrote about the public harassment of her gay friend.

Second runner-up Jane Kim, a junior of Korean descent who attends Beaumont School in Cleveland Heights, saw her mother come home bloodied and beaten after she was set upon by thieves who thought the immigrant woman would make an easy target.

To their immense credit, these young people all did something about the tormentors. Once-quiet Gabrielle, 18, joined the NAACP Cleveland Youth Council and earned the nickname of "The Preacher" for her outspoken views against hatred and racial bias.

Hannah helped organize an annual Day of Silence at her school on behalf of gay kids everywhere who are bullied and "feel trapped and can't speak out." She takes it seriously, writing no notes or texts the entire day, she says, thereby reminding everyone how some children suffer in silence.

Courtesy of Maltz Museum of Jewish HeritageSecond runner-up Jane Kim

Jane, once ashamed of her culture, joined a dance troupe through the Korean American Association of Greater Cleveland. Now she says she refuses to "cower any longer" and tries to stop the hateful remarks and discrimination.

Their commitment to work on behalf of those who are relentlessly taunted and harassed should be an example to the adults around them.

So where were the principals, teachers, counselors and bus drivers when these students or their friends or family members were being insulted or worse?

Sometimes, says Gabrielle, who is now trying to decide where to use her four-year, $50,000 grand-prize scholarship, the adults were right there, looking but not seeing, hearing but not saying anything.

It simply isn't right.

"Many times I would stand at my locker and cry," Gabrielle says. Or the ugly taunts and snickers about her size would happen in front of the class when she was chosen to read a passage or do a math problem at the blackboard. Her tormentors had free rein.

She thinks teachers brushed off those incidents, convincing themselves that they were trivial. They mattered to Gabrielle, though, as they do to thousands of kids across America who are bullied.

The hard-to-watch documentary "Bully" by Lee Hirsch focuses on five victims of bullying -- two of whom had killed themselves before the filming began -- but the casual attitude of school officials toward the incidents are more bewildering and infuriating than the bullies.

It's easy to see what motivates bullies. They pick on students they believe are weak, frightened or weird. But why adults would simply turn a blind eye to them is a bigger mystery.

The pain bullies wreak on victims can be long-lasting. Its power persists long after perpetrators and witnesses have forgotten these incidents.

It's instructive to remember that Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate, says he doesn't remember cutting off a fellow student's long hair with the help of his prep school friends in 1965. (He issued an apology nonetheless.)

Yet, as an adult, John Lauber, the target of those scissors, told people that he couldn't forget the embarrassing incident. Romney and his friends escaped punishment.

So let's not just blame the kids.

Recalling insults hurled at her gay friend, Hannah says that "adults need to be the ones who step in and say 'You need to work with these people for the rest of your life. They're just like you.' "

She's right.

Maybe if adults did a better job teaching and reminding youngsters to treat everyone with respect, regardless of race, color, creed or sexual orientation -- and punishing those who don't -- these young, prize-winning essayists would not have to do all the heavy lifting.

Broussard is an associate editor of The Plain Dealer's editorial pages

Editor's note: Comments have been disabled on this story and the essays.

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